Picture this. It’s gameday, and I’m excited to watch my favorite team play. I pull up the streaming service I normally use for Premier League games. But the game is nowhere to be found.
There are three minutes until kickoff. I check another service (I have to call my mom for the password). Not there either.
Frustrated, I look up where the game is available in my region. There’s a free trial for a service that comes out to 40 dollars a month. Now it’s five minutes into play, and I watch peevishly as the play-by-play notifications pop by.
Finally, I throw my hands up. I click around the internet, then shuffle through a couple of grainy streams before settling on the one with the most frames per second.
Swap out the league, the day, the platforms, my levels of patience, and it’s much the same each time I want to watch a game. For me, my high-speed chase through the sprawl of various services that offer live sports adds up to more than $70 a month, including shared accounts.
It’s not just the price that turns off sports fans. It’s also the viewer experience. The whole process is indicative of a shift in the way people consume sports, and how companies worsen the experience for consumers while beefing up their bottom line. So, how did we get here? And are we doomed to do the same infuriating song-and-dance forever?
Today: streaming is king
Football is the biggest sport in the world. So it’s no surprise that it has the streaming numbers to back it up, too. Major football events like the FIFA World Cup, UEFA Champions League, and rivalry matchups like La Liga’s El Clásico (FC Barcelona vs CF Real Madrid) can draw millions upon billions of viewers.
Thanks to the rise of streaming and the prevalence of social media, there has been a major shift in the way people consume sports over the last decade.
Major streaming services like Amazon, Hulu, and HBO Max, previously focused on movies and TV shows, have shifted more resources to sports streaming. Platforms will often buy the rights to a certain league, matches, or competition, so that viewers have to watch the event on their platform. For example, take Major League Soccer’s one-of-a-kind deal with AppleTV, where MLS matches are streamed exclusively to AppleTV subscribers. However, this means that a consumer has to buy multiple different subscriptions, which can rack up prices fairly quickly.
It’s not just the prices frustrating viewers–it’s the overall experience, which is disjointed and often riddled with ads, paywalls, and poor quality streams. One post on AndroidAuthority details their trouble streaming the National Women’s Soccer League, an ordeal hovering around $30 per month. Another article from The Guardian found that fans pay nearly 60% more to watch football than in 2020.
The rise and fall of cable television
The first football match was broadcast on the BBC in 1937. Since then, association football broadcasting has become a highly lucrative industry attracting billions of viewers and in revenue. Cable television made a steady upward trend, reaching its peak in the early 2010s. In 2010, Nielsen showed that 90.7% of TV households in the United States were subscribed to cable television.
However, since the introduction of on-demand streaming services, cable TV has struggled to maintain audiences as more people decide to “cut the cord.” Cord-cutting refers to the number of people who’ve decided to cancel their subscription to cable television, usually in exchange for streaming subscriptions. As cable viewership slowly declines, broadcasters have started to branch out into the streaming world.
Consuming sports in the streaming era
The way that young audiences are consuming sports is also changing the media landscape. Media worries that Gen Z enjoy sport less than their older counterparts. That’s not necessarily true; instead, research shows that our generation is simply more reserved, preferring not to go out or drink to watch sports. Most Gen Zers watch sports through social media rather than on television, and less enjoy live sports than any generation before them.
Clips and short videos can help drum up a larger audience, but new consumers are often met with a paywall. It could be argued that the increase in content could overwhelm consumers and even push them away from purchasing the service.
Lots of viewers simply end up pirating games. A survey by ComRes found that 4 in 10 Premier League fans stream matches illegally once a week or more.
The future of soccer streaming
Though there is still a legitimate interest in watching soccer, especially as the World Cup approaches next year, sports broadcasting is still gaining its footing in the streaming era. Though broadcasters are finding more ways to monetize the game, consumers are left with an expensive, fragmented viewing experience. What is the future of sports streaming? Will it get better for viewers? Or are we doomed to the mixed-up mess of monthly fees and free trials?
One answer may be the introduction of “skinny bundles,” which provide a bundle of a handful of live TV channels. This option is both cheaper and a streaming service, meaning it can be accessed anywhere, from any device. Some examples include ESPN+, Sling TV, or FuboTV, all of which prioritize bundling sports streaming rather than the entire live television package.
Only time will tell where the future of sports broadcasting is headed and how the new generation will shape it. But it’s clear that the era of cable television broadcasting has come and gone. Young audiences increasingly want to consume more content off the pitch, too. It’s not uncommon to see clips from a football analysis podcast or Twitch streamer IShowSpeed go viral. People love to follow what players do after fulltime. Often, being a pro player also means becoming an influencer and celebrity. Brand deals, Instagram accounts and Ronaldo’s YouTube channel are all part of the landscape of football today.
One can only hope that the streaming era is simply experiencing growing pains as consumers pay more and enjoy their experience less.
